tj, tj, tj- I've thrived professionally and economically during the Bush years. I hold a financially and personally rewarding position at a level of influence and responsibility in my field that an energy drone, such as yourself, can only dream of. However, some of us actually have the vision to look beyond our personal circumstances and recognize that an economic system which increasingly concentrates wealth is broken. Now I know that some people (cough- tj) (cough- Mr. Clutch) (cough- ass magic) may be too intellectually limited to be able to concieve of a market-based economic system that rewards hard work and risk taking, while simultaneously providing broad based opportunity and distributing benefits across all income levels. But that doesn't mean it can't be done. In fact, we used to have an economy in this country that did a much better job in these areas.
Well it apparently is not just a case of those who don't have, envying those who do i.e those who have excelled by their own merits. as TJ would have it. It is not just wanting communism or what could be called absolute equality of outcome. Equality of opportunity is suffering also. .... But new research suggests the United States' much-ballyhooed upward mobility is a myth, and one that's slipping further from reality with each new generation. On average, younger Americans are not doing better than their parents did, it's harder to move up the economic ladder in the United States than it is in a number of other wealthy countries, and a person in today's work force is as likely to experience downward mobility as he or she is to move up. Moreover, the single greatest predictor of how much an American will earn is how much their parents make. In short, the United States, contrary to popular belief, is not a true meritocracy ...Several studies released in recent years suggest that, contrary to popular opinion, Americans enjoy significantly less upward mobility than citizens of a number of other industrialized nations (some of the studies can be accessed here, here and here). German workers have 1.5 times the mobility of Americans, Canada is nearly 2.5 times more mobile and Denmark is 3 times more mobile. Norway, Finland, Sweden and France (France!) are all more mobile societies than the United States. Of the countries included in the studies, the United States ranked near the bottom; only the United Kingdom came in lower. http://www.alternet.org/workplace/70103/?page=2
This is complete bull****. Overwhelmingly, the wealthy in this country are the offspring, often 3rd generation, of those hard-working, risk-taking people who happened to work hard and take risks during the biggest boom times that the United States has ever witnessed. I see a number of people critiquing the article for the omission of certain numbers, and that may be a valid criticism of the methods used for the article, but the phenomenon described is hardly contestable. But, the article works on base income for the most part - it doesn't take into account business subsidies and corproate welfare that filter into this 1% of the population, the perks and benefits one inevitably receives from being wealthy, the security in health care, the ability to afford college without taking out massive loans, and so forth ... But, seriously, what makes you guys so willing to stick up for the uber-wealthy? You know, the people who will never be here to discuss this because they spend their time having expensive lunches with our legislators - why do you support them so strongly? Why have you bought into their ideology? The fact of the matter is, if you support an ideology that does not benefit you ... in fact, it's harming you by introducing a greater degree of instability into this country with each passing generation ... then you have been indoctrinated. Capitalism was an interesting idea, and a very accurate description of the way things worked ... in late eighteenth-century England where it was developed. But, it's been out-of-date for at least 60 years, and it no longer applies to the world we live in. Why has it persisted? Because those who benefit the most from the system remaining unchanged have managed to convince millions of average people that it's the best system for the average person as well. There are so many fallacies involved with supporting this system, but they're so entrenched in our culture (in some respects, these ideas are our culture) it's an uphill battle to even get people to realize that those base assumptions can even be recognized as ideas, let alone disputed. The fish have no word for water.
Oh, give me a ****ing break. Why don't you explain to me, in some detail, what it is I don't understand.
Consider the source and the interpration. Some similar study came out of the Treasury department that was intrepreted wildly different depending on the political stance of the person interpreting. From your link: "The key take-away is that American families are just as likely to be downwardly mobile -- 33 percent fall into the group -- as they are to join the 34 percent who move up." In other words, 34% are likely to move upto another group. That means a family in the lowest class has a 1 in 3 chance of moving higher. I think I read another statstic that said 40% don't move up in a genaration. Um...that means 60% do move up. I'll have to find a link for that.
Guys like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, just to name a couple examples, weren't even alive 60 years ago. You seem to think there is just a group of wealthy elite that remains unchanged, and that could not be further from the truth. We aren't defending the wealthy people specifically, we are defending a system that allows for so much wealth creation. We know that people will use statistics to justify taxes and programs that will just slow the economy down.
This isn't necessarily true (though it may be so). It may be that people in the middle class have a great chance of moving up, and people in the bottom class have very little mobility. We'd have to know more about the study to know better than that, especially how they define moving up. It may simply be that people in the top 60% keep shuffling up and down while the bottom just stays there. Or it may be as you described (or even more so, where the poor can become middle class very easily, but it's difficult to break into the upper class).
thadeus, 80% of American millionaires (top 0.25%) are first-generation wealthy. The better question is why you care so much what they have.
When I was in banking, I knew alot of these millionaires you speak of. People who own property or their own business. Their property and business maybe worth a million, but its not like they could go and convert those assets to a million dollars tomorrow. they are different issues.
Even so, I don't have the statistics, but I would bet dollars to doughnuts that 90+% of the people in the top 1% in net worth are also in the top 1% of income earners. The privileged class of inherited money that thadeus talks about is not a significant part of America. There just aren't that many of them.
well I would too before we continue this but I'm not so much bothered by inherited wealth as I am with actual earnings by top executives vs. the poor, not the middle class as much. I make middle class income, and its definitely enough to live on and save.
Bill Gates: "...his father was a prominent lawyer, his mother served on the board of directors for First Interstate Bank and the United Way, and her father, J. W. Maxwell, was a national bank president." I can't find information on Steve Jobs' adopted family that indicates their social status. But it doesn't matter, because the argument you're making is faulty. Why do you know about Steve Jobs and Bill Gates? Do you know the names of many others with similar stories? The reason you know is because they're the exception, and that's why they're well-known. It's also entirely possible, as proved by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, that humans can go hang out on the moon - why haven't we all done it? I mean, the existence of these two people, among others, proves that we can go hang out on the moon, right? (You're making an "exception-that-proves-the-rule" argument, which is a recognized logical fallacy: http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html#proves_the_rule) There is an established wealthy elite in this country - money moves from generation to generation within a single lineage more freely than in any other relationship. And yet, both of these stances amount to exactly the same thing ... weird how that works, ain't it? And, of this 80% (I'd really have to see a statistic for it - I'm not fully doubting it, but curious), how many of them came from families that could afford to put them through college, could afford to give them enough of a cushion (buy them a car, give them living-on money) as they developed their ideas. How many came from a family that could insure their health, could afford to live in a neighborhood with access to quality public education? How many had one (or both) parents who didn't have to pull down double-time shifts every single week just to make ends meet? ...but none of this applies to my argument here - one doesn't qualify for the top 1% by being a paltry millionaire. There are no millionaires in the top 1%. Look at both candidates in our last two elections ... look at the majority of our legislators ... look at the people on the boards of all the major media companies ... There aren't that many of them, sure, but since when does the sheer quantity of people imply a given result? Money talks - and keeps everyone else quiet. There may not be many of them, but they are the people determining our public and international policy, they are the people who decide what's "news" and what isn't, they are the people who benefit from our system and manage to convince the average person that supporting the system is in everyone's best interest. We are not a meritocracy. This country has millions of intelligent, hard-working people who cannot make ends meet. I would love for one of you to list the base assumptions you're working with here - if you work hard you'll get ahead? If you are broke it's because you're dumb/lazy? If you question the system, it's because you're just jealous? The profit-motive, as an economic process, will lead to optimal outcomes in all other aspects of our culture? If I'm doing well financially, it's because I'm smarter and I work harder than all those people who aren't doing well? The income of my parents has little to do with my success? ...all of the above?
Dude - if you think this debate is about mere millionaires, or that having a million dollars remotely qualifies you as rich these days, you are so behind the curve that you may want to re-evaluate your entry into the fray. There was a great, symptomatic, article today in the national law journal about wall street envy - lawyers who make 1m per annum were complaining that they were being priced out of Manhattan by financial professionals. But anyway - if you really want to know, the great rise in the # of millionaires over the last 5 years is largely attributable to the real-estate bubble. WOW - That one sure worked out well, didn't it?
You're undermining your own point. Most of the income from from the top 1% (and really, top 1% is the wrong end of the scale, the top .1% or .2% is probably as or more wealthy than the top .8-9% combined) comes from investment income - not "sweat and hard work". Once you have 100 million dollars, it's pretty easy to make a few million per year, without lifting a finger. YOu seem to be coming at this debate from a very dated, 1990's perspective. The game has changed substantially, that is what guys like Bill Gates (who you keep citing) and Warren Buffet keep trying to warn us about.
LOL @ people implying that Bill Gates worked his way up from nothing. His dad, Bill Gates Sr. is the name partner in Preston Gates Ellis, now Kirkpatrick Lockhart Gates - the premier law firm in the pacific NW. This is not to imply Bill Gates Sr. is a bad guy - he happens to also be one of the primary proponents of KEEPING the estate tax and a very public voice against income inequality.
